Why I Laugh at the Term “Conflict of Interest”

At an agency, I often hear prospective clients spend a lot of mental energy pontificating on the concept of a conflict of interest—but as destination marketing and PR specialists, having worked for many, many destinations during my career, I have some, well, unique thoughts.

For more than 25 years I have helped implement marketing communication campaigns for destinations on every continent except Antarctica. While many destinations have the same end goal— to increase exposure in order to inform consumer perceptions of a destination and drive bookings—they never have the same exact strategy and tactical approach. Not once—ever.

When a prospective client says to us, you can’t possibly work for, say, Argentina and Ecuador, it’s equal parts paranoia and lack of perspective on the world of destination marketing.

I want to make it clear in these five points why it’s reductive to say our work for a destination similar to another is a simple conflict of interest.

1. Every Destination is Unique

If you don’t believe this fact from the start, perhaps you should reconsider your career path. In addition to being unique in their offerings, every destination, even those in the same region, has its own strategy. They have their own communities with their own stories to tell and their own targets that they hope to reach. When a destination works with an agency, they hire the agency to tell those stories for them through advertising or share those unique angles through public relations.

Having the opportunity to achieve success for multiple destinations forces our staff to be even more creative and find bespoke ways and messages that truly differentiate each destination.

2. Journalists Are Always On the Hunt for Good Ideas

First, let’s discuss PR – specifically media relations. As a specialist agency, the travel media and its journalists come to our publicists pretty much daily asking for examples to include in their stories. They need a family destination or a sustainability example, and we feed them examples in our client destinations for them to consider along with the countless other examples they are sourcing. We call this reactive pitching. 

For our clients we can’t guarantee they’ll be selected from the buffet, but they are always on the menu. Journalists are very busy, busier than you, so the fewer emails they have to send or calls they have to make the better. By connecting with journalists when they are at their most receptive—when they are asking for stories—clients always win.

3. Journalists Write More Than One Story A Year

One of our key strengths as an agency is our tight knit relationships with journalists. And in their work, they don’t just write one story a year. The benefit of working with a specialist agency is that even if the media doesn’t select your destination today, tomorrow there is another story that could run with you featured in it.

4. Good Ideas Aren’t Locked in a Tower

Sometimes a strategic partnership that wasn’t greenlit for one destination is the perfect match for another, and a smart agency keeps these possibilities alive. It’s not a conflict of interest—it’s a matter of hitting the right note at the right time, and every client can’t do that with every big idea at any given time.

Furthermore, if a big idea works, other destinations will eventually replicate it—or try. While an agency keeps their work confidential, people change jobs and information can be freely found in the public record. At the very least, competitors will see what you’re doing on social media and at events. Nothing is truly secret. So don’t waste your energy pretending that it is.

Where destinations can exercise control is by creating guidelines to ensure that certain brand partnerships are theirs exclusively for a period of time, or that an agency doesn’t “double dip” when claiming credit for media results. These aspects can be easily hashed out at the start of a contract.

5. Agencies are…Busy

At an agency, nobody has time to sabotage your marketing. Agencies are in the business of making money. I know! Shocker! As destination marketers, our goals are to serve the needs of our destination clients, and not pit them against each other or use one client to undermine another. We’re masterminds of destination marketing, but we don’t have time to be masterminds of subterfuge.

A certain amount of trust is needed for destinations to know that their agency is working in their best interest. Just because we may service destinations that have some similar offerings, it doesn’t mean our goals or approach are the same. We have our own reputation to maintain, which means doing everything we can to ensure our only interest is supporting that of each client.

Looking to create a new relationship with a destination marketing agency who gets it? That’s us. Contact Karyl Leigh Barnes, Tourism President, at karyl.barnes@aboutdci.com to learn more about what DCI’s team of marketing experts can do for your goals and objectives.